Maggie Smith plays a novelist of "Bodice Rippers" told by one character in the film. She lives with her assistants and servants in a huge home in the hills of an Italian village. Charming in every way with beautiful, bucolic grounds, Wisteria choked lattice awnings, beautiful gardens and ceramic tiled rooms. She takes a train to England and there is an explosion. She invites the survivors of the explosion to recuperate at her home. I really like the film due to the scenery and acting. All the actors bring their characters to life here. Maggie Smith's Mrs.Delahunty seems to be a proper English woman with a sense of humor. However, we learn that she drinks and smokes too much basically because she is lonely. Not having a husband or children and coming from a questionable background it is touching to see her caring for everyone from the explosion on the train. Many of the scenes are touching without becoming too sacharine. The film never becomes too sappy and while some subjects are sort of cast aside there is something very heartwarming here. Very good!

This film, while the theme has been done, has a cadence and beauty to it. Maggie Smith as romance writer Emily Delahunty is sympathetic and believable, a woman who survived many travails in Europe, including childhood abuse. She comes out of it okay, and is now the hostess to five other victims of a terrorist attack, the only survivors on board the train.The child Amy becomes autistic, and Dr Innocenti attempts to help her, and much debate is over where she should be returned. To the U.S. to her uncle? (Riversmith, very well done by Chris Cooper). An anal- retentive professor who, while at dinner discusses his career. The habits of the red carpenter ant. His wife, he emphasizes, has a completely different line of work. She studies the black carpenter ant. The expressions on some of the guest's faces are priceless.There are a few patchy areas, the detective Giancarlo Gianinni, inquiring about the terrorists, this part of the story is never really fleshed out for the audience. There is an embarrassing scene with Smith drunk on wine and Riversmith is repulsed by her. It is sad, as she is merely a kind, older, and lonely woman.Overall a curious story, with beautiful shots of Siena and Umbria. Good performances especially by Smith and Chris Cooper. Do not miss. 9/10.

Dame Maggie Smith plays a successful British author who travels on train with a group of unsuspecting passengers. She befriends a young girl named Aimee. I love Maggie Smith and her performance was one of her best roles in years. She plays a classy, elegant author who lives very well in Umbria. Tragedy occurs when the train explodes leaving her, Timothy Spall, Chris Cooper, Aimee, and an older gentleman besides herself as survivors. She decides to bring them to her home in Umbria, Italy where she gets to know them. Sadly, Aimee's life is not all what it seems. One of the younger men loses his love and another man has a secret. They all have secrets but the movie is based on William Trevor's novella who is one of Britain's best known authors. Anyway, the filming, the art direction, and the acting is pretty decent considering the script is a bit weak.

This film would immediately appeal to anyone addicted to Maggie Smith and the idyllic Italian countryside of Umbria, but it has unexpected delights to offer in its unassuming, almost art-house, flavour, and the low-key, but affecting, performances of excellent actors Timothy Spall and Ronnie Barker. Chris Cooper is rather wooden, but his academic, unemotional character casts a strong contrast to the hapless vagaries of Maggie Smith's Emily Delahuntey, and therefore works well.Suspension of disbelief is required for the over-imaginative plot, almost out of one of Emily's romance novels. But the pleasure of such a film is simple, and simple pleasures can entertain as much as the richer, more complex enjoyment of films it might be compared with such as 'Tea With Mussolini' (which, of course, is a much fuller film in terms of plot, characters, script, and drama). 'Enchanted April' also comes to mind as another film where the Italian countryside is almost a character of the film and much more than a backdrop.A very pleasant interlude for a winter's afternoon, or Spring evening, and Maggie Smith is as mannered and original as ever. I especially loved her flowing clothes, which suited her and her character very well.